John seems to be enjoying his freshman year of wrestling at the college NCAA (Div. III) level at Southern Virginia University. Unsurprisingly, he says that it's harder and more intense and strict than high school wrestling was, but it's still fun. He's been working hard this fall and wrestled his way (literally 😉) to the second-in-line place for the 133 spot. Then when the 133 starter quit, he became the starter. So that's pretty cool. He's won a few matches so far, and we've been able to see some of them online, which has been great!
Sam and I streamed his first home meet from YouTube onto the TV, which was so fun to watch!
This was him being introduced along with his opponent at the start of the meet.
This was just before the match started.
And obviously this was once the match started.
John wrestled well but lost this match and was not happy about it (neither was his coach because apparently there were some things he should have done better! 😬). I will say that after watching the whole meet, in John's defense, he went up against the opposing team's best wrestler who was also a captain and probably an upperclassman.
I really liked being able to watch his meet on TV like this and I look forward to doing it again.
Even better was that a few weeks later, I got to watch John's meet in person! I drove down to Ursinus College outside of Philadelphia to watch SVU's away meet there. It was so good to see my boy again for the first time since August, to watch him wrestle, and then to drive him home to Massachusetts that day, where he stayed for a week--a week in which I didn't see a lot of him because he was with his friends so much! #priorities
His teammates were nice and I got to meet the coach, too. I'm so glad that John went to an LDS-based school. You can tell by the way these guys conduct themselves that they're LDS/Christian.
He can still walk on his hands! He said he's one of the only guys on the team who can. I guess they do this as part of their pre-meet warm-up.
They're the same weight but his opponent was so much bigger! John did his best against him.
He still hasn't gotten pinned by anyone since his junior year which I think is a pretty cool accomplishment. Tech-faulted yes, but pinned, no.
I still don't know how I produced not one but two wrestlers (Sam is following in John's footsteps), but I'm glad I did because it turns out that wrestling is a pretty cool sport with ancient roots and literal hand-to-hand combat and some exciting moments and finishes! 💪
